All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.

Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

11/21/2014

A Thought

This is just a thought. I haven't particularly worked it all the way out. Here it is all the same:

Talk of impeaching Obummer is counter productive insofar as:

There are not enough likely votes in the Senate to actually impeach

Impeachment would still leave his bad decisions in place:

The amnesty

Obummer lack of care

Tighter controls on industry

EPA overreach

Damage to the economy

Supreme Court appointments, etc

Impeachment makes Obummer a "hero" to the left especially since it will be unsuccessful

Impeachment will be seen as or promoted as a racial motivated event by the left and create more social unrest.

What we need is another, better option that gets Obummer out of office and undoes some of the damage done by his reign. Why not finally address the "birther" objections?

A Senate Resolution declaring Obummer is not lawfully a "Natural Born Citizen" would only require:

A Hearing on the floor of the senate

A motion of disqualification for office

A vote garnering 51% support for disqualification

Adequate evidence of non-qualification has already been assembled by a lawfully elected sheriff and would meet the procedural requirements for evidence used in a trial.

If Obummer is found to not lawfully occupy the Presidency:

All acts signed into law would lack constitutional authority

All political appointments would be voidable

All executive orders would be null

All administrative law rulings would be subject to review

A finding that Obummer was illegally in office due to fraud would allow:

The government to pursue reimbursement for the personal expenses the first family has incurred at taxpayer expense

Those expenses could be paid out of the estimated $180 million left in Obummer's campaign coffers

This wouldn't come close to repaying his extravagance, but it would reduce monies available to the political machine that elected him

Obummer would be ineligible for a federal pension or any other post office taxpayer funded largess

I see the "birther route" to removing Obummer from office as preferable to impeachment mainly because impeachment legitimizes the actions and time spent in office. The "Birther Option" effectively delegitimizes the last 6 years of his reign.

There are no doubt cons to this plan as well. There would need to be an all out publicity campaign to shift the hearts and minds of his most loyal supporters to reduce the civil unrest that would result from taking the king of the throne. There would also need to be a massive rediscovering of Republican cajones. Republican senators should look for them at the midpoint where the thigh bones connect to the hip bone. John Boehner should look for his in Nancy Pelosi's purse.

7 comments:

- There is no constitutional basis for such an action. Article 1, Section 5 states, in part:

"Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members..." [emphasis mine]

According to this, they can only judge the qualifications of other Senate members, not the President.

- When the Senate does vote on expulsion on one of its members, it requires a two-thirds majority. It is not conceivable that even if it were constitutional for them to judge the qualifications of the President, that they would have the requisite two-thirds to do so. I don't know where the 51% number (simple majority) came from, but I dare say it is incorrect.

It is assumed that the Electoral College responsible for voting in the President and Vice President has vetted all candidates as to their qualifications. If anyone should have the power to disqualify Obama on this basis, it would be them. However, the Twelfth Amendment -- which replaced Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 and specifies the duties of the Electors -- does not include this function, and thus it is similarly not constitutional for them to do so. And even if they could, the majority -- who voted Obama in -- would most likely not also vote him out.

This leaves impeachment as the only constitutional option for removing him.

All this is my own opinion, of course. But I find this analysis on Censure to somewhat back up my interpretation, as it reasons that censure is the only option other than impeachment for anything related to the President -- and even this is not strictly constitutional.

The unlikelihood of republicans standing up to Obummer is the biggest hurdle. Your other thoughts are well taken. There was a senate resolution confirming John McCain's natural born citizenship that was passed in order for him to run for president. I believe 51% was all that was required to pass that. It seems to me that the precedent has been set. Thus what the senate giveth the senate can taketh away.

Res Ipsa: "There was a senate resolution confirming John McCain's natural born citizenship that was passed in order for him to run for president. I believe 51% was all that was required to pass that."

A Senate resolution is not a law, and is non-binding in this sense. They also passed SRES 474 ATS in June of this year, which recognized June 19, 2014, as 'Juneteenth Independence Day'. Is this in any way binding on you or me? No. Does it require federal offices to give their workers this day off as an official Federal Holiday? No.

Resolutions are largely ceremonial functions that have no standing for establishment of legality. If the Senate had done the same thing for Obama's citizenship, would it make a difference in his opposition's eyes as to whether or not he was actually a natural-born citizen, given the other evidence? Because if this could in any way dispel the legal question of his birth, it would have been done already, just as it was with McCain. IMO, the reason the Senate never did the same thing for Obama is that they didn't consider his eligibility to be in question as McCain's was.

And had they passed an Obama resolution, and then the new Republican majority Senate would implement this plan...which would take precedence? Or put another way...if a Democrat-controlled Senate had passed a later resolution negating the earlier McCain resolution, would it actually legally change his citizenship, either? No, not any more than the first one established it.

they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President [emphasis mine]

That each is voted on separately means that Biden's election would still be valid should Obama's be deemed invalid. This mechanism also means it's conceivably possible to have a R president and D vice-president (or vice versa), as unlikely as it may be to actually come to pass.

Which brings up another good point -- even if Obama was impeached or his election ruled invalid, Biden would still take over and nothing Obama did would be changed by him.